Staff Machine Learning Research Engineer, App Store Search

The Apple Services Engineering (ASE) team is one of the most exciting examples

of Apple’s long-held passion for combining art and technology. People here

create the experiences loved by users across App Store, Apple TV, Apple Music,

Apple Podcasts, and Apple Books. The scale is massive delivering content and

entertainment in over 35 languages to more than 150 countries, while meeting

Apple’s high bar on quality and performance. The team is responsible for

building secure, robust, end-to-end solutions across server and client to solve

challenging problems. Thanks to Apple’s unique integration of hardware,

software, and services, engineers here work with a single unified vision of deep

commitment to strengthening Apple’s core principles such as customer focus,

privacy, and relentless innovation. Although services are a bigger part of

Apple’s business than ever before, these teams remain small, nimble, and

cross-functional, offering an opportunity to work with passionate people,

contribute ideas, and ship innovative software. Here, you’ll do more than just

join a team — you’ll be creating positive impact in people’s lives.

DESCRIPTION

The ASE Search team is a vital part of Apple ecosystem, powering search for App

Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Podcasts, Books, iTunes and more, on a wide set of

platforms such as iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, Safari, and 3rd party devices.

Driven by passion for the extraordinary rather than the easy, our team of

problem solvers, is dedicated to helping users discover media and content in

exciting new ways. We are looking for extraordinary and motivated machine

learning researchers and engineers to join us in our journey. As a Senior/Staff

Machine Learning Research on the ASE Search team, you will lead the design and

development of next-generation search and conversational discovery features for

Apple's ground breaking devices and platforms.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

3+ years of relevant industry experience building large-scale ML & data systems

Familiarity with search or recommendation systems, conversational engines, or

related domains Strong knowledge of generative AI systems including Large

Language Models, Transformers, Reinforcement Learning, RAG, and agentic patterns

such as ReAct, Chain-of-Thought, Tool Use, and Multi-Agent orchestration

Experience with one or more distributed ML training frameworks such as PyTorch,

TensorFlow, Ray, or JAX, and inference engines like TensorRT or vLLM Technical

leader with exceptional communication skills and a track record of solving

complex, ambiguous problems in a highly collaborative environment

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related subject area Proven ability to build

& scale Search & Conversational systems, applying 7+ years of hand-on experience

across the full product stack — including query understanding, semantic

retrieval, multi-stage ranking, indexing, intent classification, and

context-aware generation. Deep expertise in Search & Conversational systems,

bringing in 7+ years of hands-on experience building capabilities such as query

understanding, retrieval, ranking, indexing, autocomplete, intent resolution,

and context-aware generation across multiple domains. Proficient in developing

robust big data pipelines in Scala or Python using distributed processing

frameworks like Apache Spark. Familiarity with scalable, reliable distributed

backend services including Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, and container

orchestration Familiarity with A/B experimentation and data-driven product

development